War, bombardments, exile…: from the height of his twelve years, Rouslan has already experienced far too many dramas. The boy with round, youthful cheeks, whose gaze betrays a certain sadness, is making his first comeback “in real life” since the start of the invasion, in the town of Sytnyaky, 60 kilometers west of Kiev, in the Boucha district.
Eighteen months ago, on March 15, 2022, his school was hit by a bombardment. The region where this large building, which includes a primary school and a college, is located was at the heart of the fighting for nearly a month when Russian troops tried to invade Kiev. The highway that crosses it was strategic to reach the capital.
The house of Rouslan, who lived in the neighboring village, was destroyed. “Direct impact”, specifies the schoolboy in a traditional embroidered shirt, using military jargon: the missile fell in the middle of his house. For two weeks, he remained hidden in cellars with neighbors, then managed to leave the region with his family, like the five other students in his 6th grade class.
The schooling of 4 million children disrupted
A year and a half later, Rouslan has been able to find accommodation in a neighboring town and his school is finally reopening its doors, while the front line has stabilized in the east and south of the country. “We cannot wait for the end of the war to rebuild and for our children to go to school,” insists Zhanna Osypenko, deputy head of education for the Kyiv region. The area is hosting slightly more students this year than in 2021, as many internally displaced people have found refuge there. Of 625 schools in the region, 136 were damaged. Only 15 were able to resume classes.
In total, since the start of the war, 3,000 schools have been partially or totally destroyed in Ukraine. At least four million children are affected by school closures, according to UNICEF, which warns of the risk of a lost generation. As for the students refugees abroad, half do not follow the school curriculum of their host country.
Last year, most of those who remained in the country were taking courses remotely via Zoom – with the difficulties linked to power cuts. But this year, priority has been given to face-to-face education, despite the danger that complicates daily life. Cautious, the authorities force the classes to go down to the shelters during the alerts. In kyiv, the children made their comeback in the middle of the deminers, after a bomb alert. And in Kharkiv, near the Russian border, children will have lessons on the metro, because the S-300 missiles reach the city in 40 seconds. No time to seek refuge.
In Sytnyaky, the students did not have to hide in the cellar, which still smells of paint. In the early morning, September 1, there are about 70 of them, often dressed in traditional costumes, gathered in front of the school, which has been renovated. This “knowledge day” is always a big holiday in Ukraine. In this rural school, the songs, official speeches and poems read by the children follow one another, with even more emotions than usual.
“We wanted to take care of the school first”
Vadym Tokar, the community’s mayor, will never forget the moment he discovered the school, across from a hotel complex that housed a Ukrainian army unit, shortly after the impact. “There was debris everywhere, the roof was gone, the windows and doors were shattered, the heating system shattered… When I saw the other ruins in the village, I thought we would never get there. to rebuild everything,” he recalls.
“When there is no school, a village disappears, that’s why we wanted to take care of it first”, says Halyna Zakharchenko to the students, head of the association which has started the work. “You are our future, it is you who will rebuild our country.” This 50-year-old, who studied in this village, donated to the school museum a disused anti-tank missile given to her by the military. “The same ones used to drive Russian tanks out of our village,” she said. Lyubov Zabychyna, the history teacher, encourages parents to bring back missile debris found in their gardens.
After the national anthem, hand on heart, the assembly observes a minute of silence for Yaroslav Prokopenko, a former student, who died in June 2022, at the age of 29, in Donbass. During the occupation, Lyubov Zabychyna came to the school three times: to hide a trombinoscope with the names of former schoolchildren and college students who participated in the 2014 war; and to fetch a detailed map and candles to give to the Ukrainian military. The soldiers were hiding in the forest or in the houses. Like many inhabitants, she gave them food.
In his classroom, the first lesson is dedicated to the history of Ukraine, and the founding of the capital in the fifth century. The 70 years of Soviet “occupation” are presented as a parenthesis. The teacher takes them to the school museum, a small room where you can find, in addition to testimonies of the ongoing war, relics from the 19th century, paintings, objects of rural culture, but also bullets from 2014 or a helmet from the Second World War – already, at the time, the village had been destroyed.
Then Rouslan, Andriy, Angelina, Ilona, who belong to the small sixth grade class, tell their slice of history. The nights in the cellars, the explosions, and the evacuation with the constant fear “of falling on Russians and that they shoot at us”, says Andriy. All left the city during the fighting. In Ukraine, two-thirds of children have had to leave their homes.
This year, the teacher would like them to write a little testimonial on the first month of fighting. “But we would just like to forget,” whispers Angelina, hiding behind her pink phone. When they grow up, Angelina wants to be a lawyer, Andriy a farmer. Rouslan doesn’t know yet, maybe a mason. “To rebuild the country,” he laughs. “What is certain is that if when I turn eighteen the war continues, I will go and fight,” assures Andriy. Rouslan nods, though he hopes “by then the war will be over.”